City of Cardiff Council takes full control of Highways Asset Management

The City of Cardiff Council Highways department, as within all councils across the UK, was feeling the pressure to deliver. Whether it was practical solutions for deteriorating stock, managing shrinking budgets or controlling works to meet customer service requirements; they needed an effective software solution to manage their stock of nearly 5000 roads and over 100,000 associated assets that allowed them to make best use of resources, and give them the flexibility to meet changing requirements. The Cardiff Bridge team were already successfully using Asset Management eXpert Solutions' (AMX Solutions) Bridge Management eXpert (BMX) to manage their stock of bridges, embankments and retaining walls, so they recommended that the Highways team take a closer look at AMX Solutions' new product, Asset Management eXpert (AMX).

Why change?

The Highways team were being asked to provide information that they couldn’t extract from their existing data within the current system’s capabilities and it was leaving them tied to old working practices and unable to adapt to new requirements such as Whole of Government Accounts reporting. With limited scope to quickly change the existing system to provide the reports needed and unable to capitalise on the quality of the data already collected they were open to change.

Why AMX?

After the initial demonstration of AMX, it was clear that it presented a real opportunity to develop a solution that incorporated all the standard features you would expect from a Highways Asset and Maintenance Management software solution, with the ability to define their own business processes, giving them complete control of their information.

Delivering Results

• Mobile working – No more clipboards and time-consuming data entry at the end of the day has significantly increased the productivity of the field workers. And with data immediately available to the main desktop, urgent actions can be swiftly addressed.

• Automated Processes – supported by AMX Solutions' responsive team, they have been able to stipulate and apply their own business processes within the software, defining data flows and automated notifications to support rapid and accurate decision making.

• Integration – AMX’s open standards integration tools, has allowed data to be shared with other systems and departments, including the Call Centre to display defects, their status and any planned works.

The Future

The City of Cardiff Council has grasped the opportunity to take control and define their own system, combining all the benefits of a bespoke solution with the reliability and robustness of an established asset management solution. They already have plans to roll-out the solution across other departments within highways, including street lighting.

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"AMX is brilliant. It has improved the way we work, we are much more efficient. Linking photos to defects on site has saved back-office work with digital cameras and word documents, now defects are simply emailed to different departments through AMX – we should have done it years ago!"

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Nicola Bound, Highways Safety Inspector,

City of Cardiff Council